Reneé Rapp Is 'Cosmo's Digital Cover Star and Dishes on Her Relationship

Cosmopolitan

2 days ago

'Text her this: 'I feel like you would peg me crazy.' And then don't respond for two days. She'd have a heart attack,'' says Reneé Rapp. The 25-year-old star of HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls and Mean Girls on Broadway swears she doesn't believe in playing games—which, as advocates of open and honest communication, we at Cosmopolitan don't condone either...but I'm still listening because, well, Reneé Rapp is giving me advice.
We're sipping dirty vodka martinis after her Cosmopolitan cover shoot, and I've been gushing about an Instagram crush.1 'Literally fuck whoever. Get tested. Do your thing!' she continues, punctuating each line with a dramatic hand gesture and direct eye contact like she's delivering a toast at a wedding. As she changes back into leggings and a hoodie, she casually asks which lesbian bars we should hit up this weekend while she's in New York.2
1. It felt important to share, considering I only recently came out and played Reneé's hit song 'Pretty Girls' on my way to my first-ever date with a woman.
2. For anyone wondering, I recommend we start at The Bush in Brooklyn.
Reneé officially came out on Saturday Night Live in January 2024 as part of a live sketch where Bowen Yang referred to her as a 'little lesbian intern.' Before then, she'd tried on different labels and struggled with various romantic dynamics, a process I can deeply relate to. Learning who you are is not always linear, and Reneé, for one, has also been busy as hell.
Her first EP, Everything to Everyone, was released in 2022, a year after her debut on The Sex Lives of College Girls. Her first studio album, Snow Angel, came out nine months later. And a little over a year after that, her Mean Girls track 'Not My Fault,' featuring Megan Thee Stallion, peaked at number two on the Billboard chart. Reneé went on a U.S. and European tour from September 2023 to March 2024 and followed that up with a full festival circuit including stops at Coachella, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits.
And then a pause. Since last summer, her millions of fans, myself included, haven't heard much from Reneé outside of a GLAAD Media Award win and a hard-launched relationship with musician Towa Bird. She's been so uncharacteristically quiet that some might even consider this story a 'comeback interview' of sorts.
What has she actually been up to? Aside from being really in love with Towa (as you'll read below, they are really, really in love), she's been focusing on being present in her life and being a good friend to her 15 besties, with whom she shares a massive, extremely active group chat (participating in it honestly sounds like it could be a full-time job).
I can confirm her friendship skills firsthand. The night we meet, I am one of the only people in the world to have heard the entirety of her new album, Bite Me, due out in August. Yet, instead of using this time to promote it, Reneé is much more interested in grabbing my phone to help me plot on my crush. It's a scene that could feasibly exist in one of her songs and is classic Reneé.3 Nothing is off-limits, media training be damned. 'What was I going to do?' she responds when I ask about her recording process. 'Hold back for somebody else's emotional capacity? Not happening!'
3. I ask her what a 'Reneé Rapp summer' will look like. 'Sleazy,' she hopes. But when I ask which of Bite Me's tracks will be the song of the summer, she brings up a different contender: 'I fucking love 'Gnarly' by KATSEYE. Fuck what anyone else says—that is fucking hard.'
Honestly, I was concerned when I started dating my girlfriend, which is such an intense self-sabotage. I was always under the impression that I had to be miserable to make good music. But I don't think you have to torture yourself in order to make something good. Some of the most talented artists in the entire world have been in healthy and happy relationships. I've had more good days than I've ever had in my life [in this relationship], and I feel like I've made music that's better than anything I've ever made.
It's diabolical. There are lines in 'Leave Me Alone,' when we were writing it, I was like, 'Thank fucking god we wrote this because this feels cathartic. I feel so happy to be talking my shit.' But then a month later, I was like, 'Oh, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.'4 Then I realized that it's not actually that fucking deep. There's a meme of a girl going to sleep5 and she's like, 'How I feel going to sleep knowing I said what I said, and I meant that shit.' That's exactly how I feel.
4. Reneé is likely talking about these lyrics: 'I took my sex life with me, now the show ain't fuckin',' referencing how The Sex Life of College Girls was ultimately canceled after she left the series.
5. A girl who describes her feelings in memes? She's just like us!
My girlfriend6 and I talk about this all the time because she's much more of a pacifist than I am. She's much more, Let things go, let people do what they're going to do. I am very protective over people—over my friends, over my family, over myself. I have been devilishly gone after in the last couple years of my life. I'm not going to act like it doesn't bother me if it does. Anger and frustration are not something to be ashamed of. In men, they're embraced as this thing that's hot and sexy and dangerous. But for us, it's like, 'Oh, she needs to get her shit together and she needs to be classy.'
6. Reneé and Towa went public on the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party red carpet in March 2024. But they'd already known each other for a while—Towa opened for Reneé on her fall 2023 Snow Hard Feelings tour.
She's my best friend. I worship her. I love talking to her, and I also just love watching her talk. There's something so special about watching the person you are deeply enamored with talk about something they find interesting that has nothing to do with you. Which is rare, because I think I'm the center of everyone's world and especially hers—and I am, clock it—but hearing her talk about streaming her shit [on Twitch], she's just such a little freak. She's this hot, sexy, intimidating thing, but I know a side of her that's such a weirdo. Every now and again, we'll look at each other and we'll be like, 'Oh, it makes so much sense that we were ugly kids, but we're not now.' You know what I mean?
7. I follow up with a question about how I can find my own Towa Bird. 'Don't date a musician and don't date an actor,' Reneé warns. 'I'm always telling my girlfriend, 'You've chosen the worst possible partner, by the way.''
First of all, healthy relationships fight! Our first fight was probably when I was drunk. When I go out, I often stop making sense. Towa was trying to get my attention and tapped my shoulder. I felt nothing. And she was like, 'I've been trying to get your attention for half an hour.' And I looked over, like, 'When?' She thought I was kidding because it was so unbelievable, which I understand.
I didn't feel like she was using me at all. My friends have come up to me with other partners and been like, 'Hey, just so you know, this person does not care about you in the slightest and is using you for your house, your friends, your job, your connections, your everything.' Every other serious relationship I have been in, that has been the story. I used to think it was really annoying when celebrities would talk about how hard it is to feel that way. Like, 'Cry yourself a fucking river, you have the most access in the world.' And that is true, but I do get it now.
8. Reneé's previous most public relationship was with TikToker Alissa Carrington, from January to October 2023. Fans also thought she was potentially dating Broadway actor Antonio Cipriano in 2019. She has never spoken about either publicly.
In the last 8 to 10 months of my life, I've been like, Oh, wait, I don't have to do everything and I don't have to be around people that make me feel like shit. I thought it made me tough, that it made me come across as hard, that I could handle anything. But now I think the tougher thing is to tell someone to get the fuck away from you. So sort of a roundabout answer, but I love being sensitive. It's my superpower.
Those times I was overthinking in relationships were because I was with people I didn't like, but I was trying to make it work because I liked to keep myself miserable. There's such a big difference when you are with someone who gives you basic human decency. And also, my girlfriend is just really hot. I don't need to overthink it. She's gorgeous. You know how you know you're with the wrong person? When you're two inches away from their face, and you're looking at them and you're really scared and grossed out. I thought that was just me with everyone. No, it turns out that I just didn't like those people! When you're with someone who is not making you miserable, what a difference it makes!
I don't block anybody or delete anybody. But I have a couple of exes that I just pity. I'm like, 'No, I don't want to be your friend. I don't really think you're a good person.' Cara is really good at seeing the best in people, where I'm very good at seeing the truth in someone's deepest nature.
Fuck no. Hell no. Y'all do what you want to do. Not with mine. I've done it before. That shit is not for me because now I'm with the person I love and I want to marry9—stay the fuck away!
9. Reneé says she wants to be with Towa 'forever and ever,' and I believe it.
In one case, I was with a boy and I kept telling him that I was a lesbian. And I was like, 'But don't leave me,' because I wanted to be the center of attention. So we did that. And then the next one, I made some really poor decisions. And I was like, 'Wait, you have to go kiss somebody else because I can't stand this anymore.' Now that's not to invalidate polyamory because some people are genuinely polyamorous. I was not. I just didn't like those people, and I was like, Wait, let me try this shoe on. Which is not a shoe for me. It doesn't fit. Matrimony, bitch.10
10. This is now officially on my Hinge profile under 'relationship type: monogamy.'
Sex is amazing for me right now. I've always been a very sexual person, and I've always known that about myself. Sex is just kind of cool to me. A lot of people don't really like sex, and I think that's totally fine, but I, personally, am really pro riding.
I have such sexy people around me that it makes me want to have sex more. All my friends are just constantly pulling up their shirts. I've never seen more areolas ever. I've never seen more top surgery scars in my life. It's honestly so sexy. This is the best time of my life!
Last year at Coachella, I also got off birth control after eight years. As a person who does not actively need to be on birth control [to prevent pregnancy or for health reasons], I can't believe that I was ever on it! The second my body started to work itself out, I was like, 'Hang on, am I experiencing joy?'11 It made sex feel so much better.12
11. Yes, post–birth control syndrome is real—we wrote about it.
12. That said, Reneé does stress that she knows how crucial birth control can be for so many people and that awareness is important: 'My senior thesis in high school was on abstinence-only sex education and how that's really, really harmful for youth.'
I have the tightest group of friends in the entire world. We're together at least two days out of every weekend. We were just all together at our house, and we were crying—all of us being like, 'This is so cool.' We have this intersectional group of bitches at the house playing Rage Cage on a Sunday for no reason.
Straight people don't exist to me. I see one and I'm like, 'What the fuck are you doing here?' It's just made my life so fulfilled and so happy. I like my personal life more than I like my work life.13 And I've never had that experience. Not once before this.
13. She booked an earlier flight home to Los Angeles from New York so she could go out with her friends the weekend after we speak. 'Nothing matters to me more in the world than being with that group of friends,' she says. 'It's changed my life.'
Mine and Towa's house is the lesbian frat house. We don't have rugs because we can't afford to buy new ones every couple of weeks.14
I'm around people who I actually enjoy and who are funny and who are really pretty. And I'm like, 'Wait, this is the most myself I've ever felt.'
14. Wait, what are they spilling on the rugs? 'Everything,' she says.
You say it a bazillion times until you're blue in the face. I wasn't scared when I came out as a lesbian to be like, 'Okay, I'm opening this up for 10 years down the line, then perhaps I'll feel different in my gender identity. Perhaps I'll feel different in my sexuality.' I truly don't care. It does not matter.
Find your community. Whether that community is online and thousands of miles away from you or two towns over or in someone who really lifts you up beyond a way you could do for yourself. Your community will do the best it can to keep you safe. This extends so much further past gay and trans people.
Really rely on people around you who are maybe more comfortable or less at risk than you are. We kind of have a pact among certain friends of mine that's like, 'I can take a way bigger blow than you can. Let me do that shit.' I'm not going to let my friend who exists in a trans body go out and put themselves at risk because they immediately have a way bigger target on their back. There is such a dire need for protection, and the government is not going to give that to you. No one here is going to give that to you but the people you can trust.
Styled by Jessica Neises. Hair by Marissa Marino. Makeup by Loren Canby. Shot on location at Gary's Loft. Special thanks to Brooklinen for bedding.
Video loops: Sarah Ng, Sarah Kiley Morse, and Anabella Ronson-Benenati.
VP of video: Jason Ikeler. Director of video: Amanda Kabbabe. Senior producer/guy in tux: Brian Murray-Real. Producer: Alissa Godwin. DP: Alvah Holmes. Senior editor: Jeff Sharkey. Cinematographers: Derrick Woodyard and Alex Scully.